


My heart in the Highlands, my heart is not hear...

by MrsLadyNight



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Drama & Romance, Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Chronological, Points of View
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 07:23:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsLadyNight/pseuds/MrsLadyNight
Summary: The most famous artist, Viktor Nikiforov, who ‘s been painting only mountains all his life, comes to a small ski resort in the foothills of the Swiss Alps every winter. What or whom is he looking for there?"Only the heart is argus-eyed. You cannot see the most important things with your eyes ..."Antoine de Saint-Exupery





	My heart in the Highlands, my heart is not hear...

_My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not_

_here;_

_My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the_

_deer; _

_A-chasing the wild deer, and following_

_the roe:_

_My heart's in the Highlands wherever_

_I go. _

_Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to_

_the North, _

_The birth-place of valour, the_

_country of worth; _

_Wherever I wander, wherever_

_I rove, _

_The hills of the Highlands for ever I_

_love.(1)_

**POV Victor**

When do normal people go on vacation? The correct answer: either in summer, or in the "velvet" season. I allow myself to go on a creative vacation immediately after all the New Year and Christmas festivals and vacations. Every year I go to the same place - the village of Zermatt, which is one of the most famous resorts in Switzerland, almost on the border with Italy.

The permanent population of this resort village is about 5.5 thousand people, the total population varies depending on the number of tourists coming. But during the period I’ve mentioned some groups of tourists have already leave, while others have not yet come to their senses from drunkenness and parties at home and have not come here. Therefore, I can walk in silence and quietly through the streets of the village or ride an electric car, as car traffic in this area is prohibited and only electric cars are used for movement.

I am not a fan of skiing: neither simple one nor slalom, therefore, having taken an easel and paints, I often go to the nearby forest or climb the mountains, the Pennine Alps, located around the village, or go down to the Matterfisp river flowing through the village (2) by cable cars.

Why to this village? Why every year ... already ten years? Oh, this is a separate sad, I would even say, mystical story...

***

...which began one frosty Epiphany evening in St. Petersburg in our old communal apartment, where I, a ten-year-old kid, lived with my eccentric mother, who was an actress. She was just obsessed with everything mysterious, strange and mystical. And constantly she was surrounded by some gypsies, illusionists, ventriloquists, healers and sorcerers (as those people introduced themselves to me). So, that memorable evening, one of the next strange personalities volunteered to predict fate to me and my mother.

The prediction turned out to be, frankly, not really, good, practically the worst one. In accordance with it, the mother had only five or six years to live, no more, because “you have to disappear, mistress, in the abyss that suddenly will fell upon the black city, and your son will be taken into service by a strange man with his hands stained with paint. And your son will be unhappy in life and love, although simply fabulously rich up to his thirty years, until he meets a half-animal, half-human, half-spirit in the mountains in winter and loves him. And if that person loves Victor too, then the curses imposed by evil envious on your family will fall, and happiness will smile. But you, mistress, will not see this! ”

After such words, my mother simply threw that fortuneteller out of the doorway, poured herself hundred grams of vodka, drank without a bite, and sent me to bed with the words:

\- Do not believe it, Victor! All this is nonsense and vicious libel!

I, an obedient boy, went to sleep, and then for the first time I had a dream, which subsequently began to be dreamed to me exclusively in winter, but was immediately forgotten in the morning, having left some fragments in my memory.

... As if I was standing on a mountain and watching people skiing on blue, sparkling snow under the sun. There was laughter, screams, a multilingual voice.

Suddenly someone is shouting to me in English: - Get out! - And a handsome guy wearing a snow-white ski suit is rushing past me: black curly hair is combed back, black eyes with ruby sparks deep in the pupils are burning with excitement, puffy pink lips being parted smiling.

This miracle is flying past me, suddenly falls, turns into a fluffy, well-fed black kitten with a white tie on the chest and white legs, quickly is climbing along my leg up to my shoulder, wrapping itself as a collar around my neck, gently snorting and purring. Goose bumps of excitement, joy and awareness that we’ve found each other are scattering around my body in different directions ...

The dream, disappearing with the first rays of the sun, raised the same questions:

\- Who are we to each other? Why have we found each other? That means that we were once lost? And, in general, what all this means.

***

Mom died five years later during the next flood, when, after drinking heavily, she was returning home from the next acting party. Her body was not found, and distant relatives who arrived ( they settled in our room) buried an empty coffin, and they sent me to a boarding school for gifted children, since I had been painting landscapes since childhood beautifully and professionally. 

After finishing that school, I entered the Academy of Art and there I met an old artist, who taught us the basics of landscape painting. He replaced my father, even rented me a room at a very low price in his huge studio, which he had presented to me shortly before his death.

I was a nice guy, many even called me "handsome." Just imagine: a beautiful face, plus artistic bohemia, plus constant extra money having received for painting endless copies of famous paintings. I had everything: wealthy and powerful fans and admirers, men and women, luxurious gifts, trips abroad, expensive furniture, dishes, even carpets and linen. I have never experienced only one thing - love. And I really wanted it.

And once I realized that it was time to stop and think about how to live on. To live, and not go with the flow...

Having thrown away the guests who had filled my studio for Christmas, I flew away to Switzerland first (the benefit was still valid, since shortly before the New Year holidays I went there to open my next exhibition), and then travelled by train on the recommendation of one of my acquaintance to Zermatt, where I rented a suite in a hotel on the outskirts of the village.

The first two days, I just slept, enjoying the silence, the absence of people (they brought food to me in the room) and the company of a black kitten with white paws and a white tie on its chest, which stuck behind me, when I got off the train. It simply appeared out of nowhere and was running after me, stubbornly and silently following the trail into trail. For some reason, the hostess of the hotel thought that it was my pet, which I had brought with me, and allowed me to bring the kitten into my room, if I paid for his tray, cat litter and feeding.

That impudent little miracle got in touch with me even in the bathroom and was sitting on the side of the bath while I was basking in hot bubbling water of the jacuzzi, playing with bubbles of fragrant foam, and then fell into the water, allowed me to wash and wipe itself and then was nozzling on my pillow, laying its head on my neck.

Why did the feeling of its fur on my skin seem so familiar? Why did bliss pierce me through? Why did I feel like writing MY OWN paintings, rather than boring copies?

On the third day I went to an art shop, bought an easel, canvases and paints and went to the open air. The kitten was riding on my shoulder, clutching the hood of my jacket with its claws.

I had been living in that village for a month and had painted exactly thirty landscapes. In the morning, when I was supposed to leave, the kitten on the pillow was not found. In principle, it wasn’t anywhere, and the hostess of the hotel answered my question, having said that she hadn’t seen my Chernysh, that I apparently had mixed up something, since they forbade to keep animals in the hotel. In full out, I sent the paintings by registered parcels to St. Petersburg, went to the station, and then flew to Russia.

Who or what was it? And didn’t I dream of that animal?

Already at home I tried to draw a nice kitten from memory, but something constantly bothered me: either the telephone calls distracted me, or the guests arrived unexpectedly, or the preparation to the next exhibition, or simply the lack of its image in my head.

I stopped attending parties and communicating with unpleasant people, I became pickier about orders; I went inside myself and again dreamed of going to Zermatt. But I could go there only in winter...

***

And so it was. Winter. Zermatt. The black kitten. A month filled with calm, quiet joy from communicating with a cute animal, pleers, many new paintings. Then the loss of the kitten, the departure from the village and arrival to Russia. And then a year of longing, sorrow and boredom for something or someone bright, exciting blood, imagination and thoughts, warm and dear, but forgotten...

***

This year I am thirty years old. I already vaguely remember that strange prediction, but it seems to me that it’s this winter in the Alps that my future fate should finally somehow clear up and determine. Before leaving, I carried a huge bouquet of white roses to my mother’s grave. Well, let her body not be there! But I remember her and in my own way still love.

**POV Yuuri**

In Japanese mythology, youkai are supernatural beings with magical powers. According to legends, most of them have anthropomorphic features or are able to appeal to people. (3)

My family is a type of youkai - nekomat, that is, a creature that looks like a cat.

Japanese and Chinese legends describe two types of nekomats: wild nekomats living in mountainous areas and domestic cats, which turn into nekomats as they grow. Nekomat is a part of traditional folk beliefs and appears in legends as an evil character. (4)

Our family is very peaceful wild cats that have long been living in caves in the mountains near Zermatt. We eat wild animals and birds, breed like ordinary cats, sometimes go down to the village in the form of cats and play with local or visiting people. We are stroked, caressed, fed, even played with and left to live in houses for a short period, but ... people do not love us. Only when feeling true love we can turn into people and we will forever remain with someone who loves us. But this has not happened for a very, very long time.

Exactly ten years ago, I somehow felt something like love from a visiting foreigner who turned out to be a famous artist, but at night of his departure that feeling disappeared, and I returned to my family, having hidden from everyone that I had fallen in love with that person .

Over the past years, I constantly ran to him, as soon as Viktor (that was his name) got off the train at the station. It seemed as if an invisible red thread (5) had connected our hearts since that very first meeting. And then, wherever Victor was, I felt the movement and tension of that thread; I felt when he should come. But for some reason he never recognized me, as if something or someone had blocked his memory. If only I could feel at least once that he needed and recognized me, I would stay and be able to turn into a person.

***

This year Victor has been thirty years old. And for some reason it seems to me that he will come to us for the last time. If again he does not recognize me and does not want me to stay, then I will forever be locked in the body of a wild cat without the hope of becoming a man and giving him my love. After all, we love only once in a lifetime...

Oh, my grandmother for some reason is calling me to her. Maybe she will give some advice or simply scold me again for the fact that I have been wandering around the forest all this week as a crazy frog and I has become a little useless for my family...

**POV Victor**

This time everything goes awry. And the departure was delayed, and I was late for the usual train. I got to Zermatt already closer to midnight. The usual suite had been booked by someone, and indeed there was no room in this hotel (I did not have time to book a room on the Internet, I was in a hurry to escape from St. Petersburg). I had to sit out the night in a round-the-clock cafe, and only then a simple single room in another hotel was released.

But I do not regret that it’s happened. In the cafe, I met a very nice guy named Yuuri, who for some reason came here at midnight. I liked him right away. It feels like I’ve already seen somewhere these black slightly curly hair, combed back, these black eyes with ruby sparkles deep in the pupils, burning with delight and excitement and something else that I could not recognize, these plump pink lips, slightly ajar and smiling only to me (?).

Yuri took coffee, sat down at my table. We got into a conversation, although ... I mostly spoke ... I told him for some reason about my whole dull life ... my mother’s strange death... a mystical prediction that suddenly came to my mind ... and also about a fluffy well-fed black kitten with a white tie on its chest and white paws, who liked to climb along my leg up to my shoulder quickly, wrapped itself as a collar around my neck, gently snorting and purring.

Why are tears rolling down Yuuri’s cheeks? What? It can’t be?!

Like a veil from the eyes, and with it the curse has disappeared from my mind and heart. I am jump up, kneeling down in front of Yuri, hugging my found miracle, hugging to me tightly, and whispering: “Lord, how I love you! I ‘ve finally found you and will never let you go!"

Yuuri is also sobbing and snuggling up to me like that wet kitten after the first wash, and for some reason he is whispering a little inaudibly: - Grandma, thank you!

And the first petals of the dawn are blooming above us. So luxurious it is only in the mountains! And I will paint it more than once ... And I will show Yuuri the world ... And we will be happy, we simply must be...

***

A small white-gray cloud is slowly floating through the sky. That’s all that has remained of Yuuri’s grandmother. A necomat at midnight once in a lifetime will be able to turn into a person, even without being loved by anyone, if someone from its relatives agrees to die for it out of turn.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Robert Burns “My heart in the Highlands" (excerpts)  
2\. Information taken from: https://ru.wikipedia.org/Zermatt  
3\. Information taken from: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokai  
4\. Information taken from: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nekomata  
5\. The red thread of fate - a belief in the connection of two people, widespread in China, Japan and East Asia. According to this belief, an invisible red thread appears on some man's and woman's, linking them together. Old man Yuelao, who owns this thread, manages weddings and marriage ties. For this thread, circumstances, time or distance are not an obstacle. After some time, this thread begins to shrink until the two people meet.


End file.
